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They've been facetiming every other night since Yousef arrived in Turkey. That was two weeks ago.
Now, Sana is sitting on her bed, her hijab still on, of course, but make-up off.
Now, Yousef is sitting on the balcony of his grandparents' house. It's so hot that he can barely think straight but talking to Sana is something he'll do any time.
"No! Really? Please tell me you didn't!", Sana exclaims and covers her mouth with her free hand.
Yousef smiles brightly and nods slowly. "I didn't do it on purpose! Well, not really. That guy was talking in German which I only know a tiny bit of from school. And when the German-talking dude couldn't explain what he wanted from the seller, he thought my cousin and I could help so we did!"
"No, you can't call that help! You had your fun with that guy's hardship!", Sana retorts and tries to hide how funny it is to her.
Yousef leans back in his chair and shakes his head: "No, he bought what he was there for. And two additional pounds of sugar, so now he can bake a lot of stuff!"
"You're horrible!", Sana exclaims, shaking her head at Yousef. All while trying to hide how much she wants to laugh. The story is hilarious, to be very honest.
Yousef laughs, as well, and waves his hand around while talking: "No, no. My cousin made me do it."
Sana rolls her eyes and even in her dimly lit room he can see that very clearly. Sana mimics him while making fun of him at the same time: "My cousin made me do it. How did he make you do it? Did he force you? No. See, don't blame that poor guy!"
"Hey, you don't even know him. You don't need to defend him!", Yousef answers to that and loves how Sana and him can have teasing conversations without it becoming awkward at any point.
He is so concentrated on Sana, sitting there in her light grey hijab and a big white sweater, looking beautiful even at this time of the day that he doesn't notice the light on the balcony getting switched on. He just used the light coming from inside until now. Compared to the other days they facetimed, this is early. It's only 10 pm.
"Hey, I'm just trying to prevent blame being cast on someone innocent." Sana looks at him all innocently and makes his heart race. After they finally went on a real date, he had to leave the country. Of course, he was excited to see parts of his family that he doesn't during the rest of the year. But he would have been fine leaving a week later.
"Oh, that is what this is..", Yousef say but gets interrupted in the middle of the sentence.
"Yousef?", Sana hears him being called. She freezes as if she got caught doing something she shouldn't be. But that's not the case here, she's just talking to ... a friend. That's all he is for now. Or is that what Sana tries to convince herself?
She sees Yousef turn around and say something that sounds like: "Efendim, Babaanne?"
That second word, Sana knows what that means. It means grandma. Yousef had told her that a few days ago and she gets really excited that she is able to recognize that.
Then, for a few seconds she hears just rumbling and nothing clear and the screen doesn't show much anymore. Did they lose the connection? Disappointment spreads in her chest but with a sigh she tries to accept that this call ends sooner than she wanted it to. Right when she wants to end the call, the screen stops showing just black.
But it's not showing Yousef. It's an older lady with a loose hijab and grey hair hanging out of it. The woman is very pretty. Even in her panic Sana notices that.
Why was there an older lady on her screen? And not Yousef? Sana really starts panicking but smiles weakly into the camera.
"Hello?", the lady calls, she almost shouts.
Sana doesn't know if she should answer normally or not. She knows it's probably Yousef's grandmother but this was not how Sana planned on meeting her.
Again, a bit of rumbling can be heard until Yousef and the lady both can be seen. Yousef smiles somewhat apologetically and points to the lady standing next to him and introduces her.
"Sana, this is my grandmother. And this is Sana."
Sana wonders if his grandmother knows Norwegian. One of his grandmothers lived in Norway for a long time before moving back to Turkey, was she this one?
"Hello, it's nice to meet you.", Sana says finally with a smile. This shouldn't be how she met his grandmother for the first time. Not through FaceTime, not at this time of the day. It's 9 pm in Norway, so 10 pm in Turkey. Sana just hopes that his grandmother doesn't judge her for calling Yousef late in the day.
The lady leans forward to take a good look at the girl on the screen. She turns to her grandson and asks if this is the 'friend' he has been talking to almost every night. Yousef nods, starting to blush lightly. His grandmother turns back to the phone and lets her eyes wander around the girl's, Sana's, face. She can't help but notice how pretty she is. Seeing the girl sitting there in a big sweater and her hijab still well-done on her head, makes Yousef's grandmother smile. Almost every night since he arrived her grandson would go out on to the balcony to talk with a 'friend' for quite a long time. His grandmother is not stupid, she was young once. As soon as she saw how excited he got to go out onto the balcony at night, she knew that he was not talking to a just friend.
For some time Sana just sits there, with a polite smile on her face and waits anxiously. She sees and hears the two people exchange a few sentences she doesn't understand before Yousef's grandmother leans forward to look closely at Sana.
Does her hijab sit well? Does she look very tired? Is something in the background that could make his grandma instantly dislike Sana? These are some of the questions going through Sana's head.
"It's nice finally meeting the friend Yousef talks to every night.", Sana hears the older lady say and immediately her anxiety comes crashing down on her. Was that meant in just a nice way or was that meant in a 'Let's see who this is' kind of way?
So this is the grandma that lived in Norway for a long time.
"It's really nice to meet you.", Sana says once more and then realizes that she has said that before. In an attempt to save the situation she asks: "How are you? Yousef has told me a lot about you." Then her eyes fall on Yousef, who sits next to his grandma but cannot be seen completely on the screen. What she sees though is him smiling at her.
"That's really nice of you to ask, dear. I'm fine. And Yousef has also talked about you quite a lot." As soon as she says that, both women in this conversation look at Yousef whose eyes widen and who then covers his face with his hands.
Sana laughs and hears Yousef groan in a complaining way: "Babaanne."
His grandmother also laughs and then looks back at Sana. "So Sana, I heard you want to become a surgeon."
Sana's eyes widen and her mouth falls open for a second. He really did talk about her and his grandmother didn't just say that. How would he even bring her up in a conversation? And even if that happened somehow, how does he casually incorporate that she wants so become a surgeon. When Sana catches herself, she nods smilingly.
"Yes, that's the plan if that works out. InshAllah." Sana's face lights up just talking about it. She doesn't work so hard in school for nothing. Hopefully, it works out the way she wants it to.
Yousef notices how Sana's face instantly lights up when talking about her plans after school. He loves how passionate she is about that and how much she works for it. He tries to be unaffected by his grandmother revealing that he couldn't keep his mouth shut about Sana. Somehow, everything reminds him of her and he just blurts it out. At first he was able to just tell his family that he's just talking about a friend but he's traitor cousin ruined that. Yousef shouldn't have told him about Sana and the amazing date they had before he left but he couldn't help himself when his cousin had tried to hook him up with a friend of his.
Yousef looks away from the screen of his phone to his grandmother. In the way she smiles at Sana, Yousef can see that another person quickly started to love Sana. It's impossible not to. Look at her being all pretty and cute and passionate about things she likes.
"Well, I'll pray for you and that your hard work pays off.", his grandmother says.
He watches how Sana raises her eyebrows in surprise and smiles broadly, barely able to contain the smile. "Really? Thank you so much! That's .. thank you!", Sana says excitedly which makes both Acars listening to her smile.
"I'll leave you two then. It's getting late.", Yousef's grandmother says, "But you two should go to bed soon, too."
Yousef watched his grandma go inside and calls after her: "Iyi geceler!", and turns to Sana.
He finds her grinning at him with her eyebrows raised at him: "You couldn't have told me that your grandmother is joining the conversation?"
Shrugging, he laughs: "I didn't know."
"I would've looked better than this and thought about something better to say to her. I didn't want to meet her like this!", Sana rambles on, which Yousef just listens to, smiling and not interrupting her. Once she is done, he answers her.
"Not necessary at all. You look great any time and she definitely liked you, so don't worry."
Sana blushes and hopes that Yousef doesn't notice. There's one thing she needs to ask though.
"So, you talked about me?"
Yousef's free hand goes to his neck and he hesitates for a few seconds before thinking that it's already obvious so he just nods and looking directly into the camera he answers, nodding.
"Honestly, sometimes I couldn't stop talking about you."
Sana didn't expect this direct answer and is speechless for a moment. He talks about her with his family. Why is he so cute? He needs to stop that because it only makes her miss him more. She's so overwhelmed with this answer that she just changes the topic completely.
"Your grandmother is really nice, and really pretty!"
Yousef laughs about the change of topic. It's not often that Sana Bakkoush is left speechless. Being the one to achieve that makes him smile like an idiot, especially because usually it's the other way round for them.
"I'll tell her that you said that."